&Piano / Events / Fri 13 Sep 2019

&Piano 2019 Event 2 - Evening of Song: Love & Longing

For &Piano 2019's second event, we're really excited to have two internationally performing singers perform a programme of exciting and interesting song from the turn of the 20th Century to the present day.

Heather Lowe, our Mezzo-soprano, studied at the Royal Northern College of Music before moving down to London to train at the National Opera Studio. She now performs regularly with some of the biggest Opera companies around the UK, including Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, NI Opera, Opera Holland Park and this Autumn she perform in Julius Caesar with Opera North, so we’re thrilled she has a bit of free time in between rehearsals to join us this evening. Soprano Peyee Chen, born in Taipei, Taiwan, studied first in America before then studying in the UK. She has established a reputation as an extremely versatile singer, as comfortable performing more traditional music by Handel & Verdi as she is performing contemporary & experimental music. She often performs at major musical events including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Tête à Tête Opera Festival, & Lucerne Festival, & works regularly with major music ensembles (BBC Singers, Schola Heidelberg) & conductors (Simon Rattle, Oliver Knussen).

The main piece of the evening is Jonathan Dove’s song cycle ‘All You Who Sleep Tonight’, written in 1994. It’s recent date of composition defines it as a ‘contemporary’ piece of music, but it’s not what you might expect when you think of contemporary! Dove has developed a reputation for writing beautiful music for voice, and is one of the most popular composers still composing. ‘All You Who Sleep Tonight’ are a group of melodic short songs set to a selection of poems by celebrated poet Vikram Seth, about love, care and loneliness.

Woven around Dove’s collection of songs are some beautiful examples of amazing composers from the early 20th Century to demonstrate how song has evolved, how more recent composers have created ‘traditional’, ‘melodic’ music with more modern musical tastes and ideas in mind, and how music of the 20th Century was shaped by some of the most major events in history.